Introducing Hexayurt. Designed by burners, for burners. Perfect for the playa, for disaster relief, for long term housing in the backcountry. It’s cheap–less than $200. It’s easy–you can build one within 15 minutes. It works–see the video to see for yourself.

Here’s the big picture, from www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_Playa: “More than a billion people do not really have good housing. It not that they do not want a good place to live but they often simply cannot find one they can afford. They do not have access to modern building materials, and local materials are often really unsuited for building. Europeans used to thatch their roofs and now we mostly use tiles and shingles because we prefer the results. We are probably not alone in this preference.”

Millions and millions of people do not have proper housing. Designing like you give a damn can help.

Oh, you meant why for the Playa?

That’s simple. Hexayurts really enhance the Burning Man experience. You get two or even three hours a day more sleep. You have a cool place to hide out mid-afternoon. You have a warm place to party at 4AM.

In short, it rocks.

That boiling early morning? You sleep right through it. At 9AM a tent is an uninhabitable solar cooker, a hexayurt is blissfully cool and dark. Sometime around 11AM, maybe you wake up, mist the hexayurt down to cool it off and doze for another fifteen minutes, then get up fresh and ready for another wonderful day. On the Playa this is life-changing because it means that at the end of the week, you’re still fresh and sharp and ready to have fun. Your gear is dust free, and you feel great.

This is like extending your Burn by two days every year.

And you did it yourself, without lugging an RV with air conditioning to the Playa. You built your own shelter with your own two hands. It’s creative and very participatory. By building a hexayurt you’re joining a community of engineers and creators who are helping to transform the planet.

Tom Price is the former Executive Director of Black Rock Solar. Prior to that he was the Environmental Manager for Burning Man during the Green Man theme, and was in the Gulf Coast for six months during the genesis of Burners Without Borders. He's been attending Burning Man since 1997, and he's proud to say that his decade plus streak of breaking down from sun stroke on the playa on day three remains intact.